Utopia Digital: Non-governmental organizations and the making of consumers in Brazil’s “New Middle Class” shantytowns

Abstract

This article examines how class, consumerism, and employment influence beliefs of an idealized digital world in marginalized communities. I recount 24 months of ethnographic and institutional observation in a non-governmental organization that promoted the concept of “ utopia digital” (digital utopia in Portuguese) in Rio de Janeiro’s favelas (shantytowns). This corporate-funded non-governmental organization employed members of Brazil’s traditional middle class and promoted the liberating potentials of digital inclusion to members of a “New Middle Class” made up of 35 million “previously poor” Brazilians. Interviews with middle-class employees reveal how ideas of digital utopia act as a code for corporate efforts to encourage consumerism among the New Middle Class and bolster employment opportunities for members of Brazil’s traditional middle class. Reflecting on informal conversations, I also highlight a middle-class “crime talk” that frames the favela as an inherently violent place and, in contrast to their inclusionary work related to digital utopia, encourages non-governmental organization workers to physically avoid favela space. I use Zygmunt Bauman’s discussion of an “active” or “hunter” utopia as an ethnographic lens to discuss the practical and everyday experiences of technological inclusion in classed settings. By describing digital utopias as actively shaped by everyday understandings of urban exclusion and privilege, this article provides an ethnographic framework for decoding the socially reproductive nature of class-inflected consumer interventions in marginalized communities.

Digital Failures in Abolitionist Ethnography

“…Large multinational corporations such as Microsoft, Unilever, Coca-Cola, and Petrobras also collaborate with favela-based activists. Corporate branding (Scott 2020) and a desire to reproduce middle-class consumerism in the favela (Scott 2019b) are two of the more visible ways that I found outside actors attempting to co-opt the Complexo's abolitionist movement. Paulo Freire (1970) refers to similar alignments as 'false generosity' where outside interventions often promise to address social problems but also maintain oppressive ways of knowing the world.…”

“…Twenty-first-century activists overcome their failures by connecting with a lineage of anti-racist humanist vocabularies and personalities that dates back to the nineteenth-century fight against slavery (Gross and Thomas 2017;Roberts 2019). The Internet allows activists to filter more historical and global logics through local idiosyncrasies (Bonilla and Rosa 2015;Juris 2016;Scott 2019b). An example of these memetic potentials is the recent globalization of the Black Lives Matter movement, often translated by Brazilian activists as "Vidas Negras Importam" and "Vidas na Favela Importam" (Favela Lives Matter).…”

Analyzing the impact of technology incentives on community digital inclusion using structural equation modeling

“…Social inclusion that is based on technological incentives enables people to use social networks' value to connect and disseminate information and social technologies, which influence behavior. Therefore, governments must understand the factors affecting technological inclusion in different situations and work hard to deal with them (Scott, 2019).…”